It’s a story we’ve seen again and again: The state allows fishing — “harvesting” as they call it in this case — only to discover when we’re too far down the road to do much about it that the permissiveness was a mistake. Other examples include rockfish and pacific cod, the first done in by overfishing coupled with a lengthy reproductive cycle, the second by overfishing combined with climate change. What’s next? Hmmm…. could it be shrimp and spot prawns? We hope note.

Even though they’re apparently delicisious, abalone aren’t going to win any popularity contests, as one Sound Off participant pointed out, the snails “don’t have a face & big brown eyes.” But they are an important gauge of the health of our marine waters, according to the Puget Sound Ambient Monitoring Program.